The Liminal People

by Ayize Jama-everett

  “She’s a star among candles. Pretty soon someone’s going to see her light.”

  “Find her.” She grabs for my hand and holds it tight between both of hers.

  “I will.” I’m begging inside that she never lets go. When she does, I guess my face shows a little too much.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I shouldn’t have touched you.” She stands, beginning to button her blouse again. The music is dying out.

  “It’s OK.”

  “No, I shouldn’t have.”

  “No.” I’m angry as I stand to meet her eyes. “I know I’m just a freak on a mission.” I’m expecting another slap, a tear, something to show she remembers breaking my heart. Instead I get a sideways shrug, and her back as she strolls over to change the music.

  The food came with mimosas. I pour a champagne-heavy one, thinking how nice it would be to reduce my alcohol tolerance and make myself useless to her. Her narrow chin is hanging open, laden with a prepared speech when she returns to her chair. She crosses her legs like a lady of the highest court and asks me to sit with her eyes. Despite my aerial view of her now buttoned-up breasts, I comply.

  “When I left you, I was young. I wasn’t sure what was pushing me away from you. The easiest thing to point to was the thing you do. But six years ago, when you had that note delivered to me, and when I heard about what could’ve only been you trekking across Africa—hell, whenever I heard anything that sounded like your name—I had to think about the truth. I figured it out a while ago. It seemed too inconsequential to call you over. It didn’t change how I felt about you. Didn’t change the fact that I was married with a beautiful daughter, doing what I always wanted to do. So I left you alone. But you came when I called. You say you don’t want my money. I respect that. But can I give you this knowledge as some form of payment for what you’ve done, and what you’ve committed to doing?”

  I don’t answer, and she takes that as permission to continue.

  “It wasn’t the healing. I’m sorry that I made you believe that it was. Oddly enough, me calling you a freak was my way of trying to be compassionate. The truth is, I left because of you. My god, Taggert, think of what you could have been doing with your power. Even under cover you could’ve applied to medical school; even nursing I would’ve understood. But instead you drove around London in an ambulance, always volunteering for the most dangerous shifts in the most disastrous neighborhoods—and for what? Just to see if you could survive it? You thought I didn’t want to hear your stories when you came home because they bored me? Taggert, you terrified me every night. I was constantly afraid you’d never come home. I understand the concept of necessary risk. But your risk was reckless. How could I think of marrying you, or starting a family with you, when you lived in harm’s way for no other purpose than it excited you? Taggert, I left because I didn’t want to see you die. I should have said that, I know. But I was young, and you were scaring me. I thought maybe it had something to do with what happened with your brother. I thought maybe the guilt over—”

  “If you want to see your daughter again, I suggest you shut your fucking mouth.” I say it the calmest voice I can. I’m rageful. And no part of me regrets it. I won’t touch her. Not ever. In any way. Again. I’m standing and walking over to the window to get away from her petrified stare. She didn’t know what I could do, how hard I could go. She does now. Bitch.

  I’m miles away from her now, though I’m standing on the porch. She brought up Mac. She’s the only one I ever told about him. Nordeen didn’t know about him until I gave it up as a price for my sabbatical. She brought him up. She says I feel guilty about him. But she doesn’t feel guilty about breaking my heart with a letter? For calling me a freak, for throwing me away and then pulling me back when she needs me? There’s guilt, but it’s not mine. There are no words for what I want to do to her.

  All of a sudden, she’s behind me. Her arms wrapped tight around my waist from behind. I can feel her half-melon-sized breasts resting on my back, loose again, and I wonder if I could grow hands and a tongue on my back just to recapture what I lost all those years ago. When did she unbutton her shirt?

  “If you want, I’ll sleep with you,” she says, trying to sound like the idea doesn’t disgust her. She’s terrified of me right now. “It would have to be now, here. But if that’s what it takes—”

  “To find Tamara.” I turn on her, getting those dangerous feelings of comfort off of me. “It would be a labor, a kindness to an old friend doing you a favor.” We both know that’s all she’s offering.

  “I’m married,” she musters. “But if it will keep you to the task, I don’t care. I promise I’ll be good. I won’t—”

  “Stop it.” I storm back into the huge room, heading for the music. It’s all too confusing. I miss my rooftop.

  “You promised you’d find her,” Yasmine screams and then is surprised that she did. I turn the music off. “I didn’t mean to make you angry. I’m sorry. I swear, Taggert, I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  She’s shaking in nervous panic. She’s got no reserves left. This is the cost of my rage. She’s seen it before in my eyes. She knows what my vengeance looks like and wants no part of it. This isn’t ire, it’s panic. Her breasts are heaving and falling quicker than California tectonic plates. She lets out that squeal that only dogs can hear. It’s the one sound she hates making. Right before she falls on her knees I’m there. I catch her before those perfect knees hit this hardwood floor. I catch her before she falls. I always will. I pull her close to my chest.

  It’s George Washington University again. We’re in college, and she’s telling me about the first time she set a fire with her mind and how scary it is, and even though I can’t relate because I love using my power I pull her close to me, up under my skin, so she can be as close to my heart as nature and physics will allow. She’s that close.

  “Find my baby,” I think she sobs in my ear.

  “I swear I will.” And that’s when Fish’n’Chips walks in.

  The ridiculous look on his face, the doofy smile, the suit almost too small for his overextended arms, and his odd long head make him too cartoonish to take seriously. Until the bastard walks directly up to me and swings at my jaw. What’s more, he connects.

  “Son of a bitch,” I sputter. Shock, more than anything, makes me let go of Yasmine before I hit the floor. The pasty-faced white boy works out. Cartilage under his knuckles shows he’s been in a fight or two before. Not like the one he’s about to be in.

  “Darren!” Yasmine shouts at her man before looking down and seeing her breasts flowing free in the wind. Her embarrassment is evident, but I don’t care.

  I stand and outstretch my hand. He’s saying something while looking at Yasmine. His face is already apologetic. Can’t hear. Rage has clouded my ears. Now he’s allergic to his own body. His throat is closing up. His usually pasty skin is going beet red. Hit me? Faggot-ass nonpowered bitch of a politician. I can heal gods! What the fuck can you do? I cloud his eyes with hay-fever tears and start the muscle spasms brought on by excessive coughing in under thirty seconds. I’m about to infect his heart with some stray bacteria from his intestines when my coat catches on fire.

  Yasmine stands in front of me angry and pleading. She’s a walking contradiction. I still can’t hear. A fucking norm thought he could get away with touching me. I’m seeing her begging. She thinks the burning jacket will stop me. I can heal from burning. The insult from Fish’n’Chips will take a little bit. Still, the smell of burning flesh, the instinctual closing off of nerves so I won’t feel my skin merging with the cotton and nylon in my new suit shirt and jacket, shock me back into reality. I let her man go and give Yasmine the eye.

  “Nothing ever could hurt me. Except you.” I walk outside the room, jacket smoking, to face government boys with weapons half drawn. Of course. They go where he goes. I want to scream. Instead I put my hands on my head with fingers interlocked.

  Chapte
r Ten

  Yasmine is good with her tongue. In less than five minutes she’s explained away the burnt jacket as a candle mishap and somehow gotten her man to chill out on finding her with me, her blouse half opened while mimosas and bad classical music set the mood. It works for her man, but that’s not me. Not anymore. I’ve had guns pulled on me, my brother has been mentioned, and I’ve been punched by Fish’n’Chips. None of these facts bode well for the rest of my day.

  “I owe you an apology,” Darren is offering in the government luxury sedan, which is just one promotion away from being a limousine. He extends a hand to me. Behind me in the front section I feel the passenger security–detail man flinch slightly. He hasn’t cleared me with security yet, doesn’t think his mark should be touching me.

  “I’d probably have reacted the same way.” I take his hand as I lie to him. He’s got the beginnings of prostate trouble. I’m taking some juvenile pleasure in knowing the man Yasmine picked over me is going to need to have a finger stuck up his ass sometime soon. It should be funnier. But I’m nervous and I don’t know why. It’s not the guns, not the hit in the jaw, not Yasmine trying to set me on fire. It’s something else. A slow burn

  “It was just that she hadn’t mentioned it to me, you understand. So when security called me and reported that a strange man was meeting with her, I jumped to conclusions.”

  “I didn’t want to raise your hopes.” She’s perched below him just like she used to be with me. “What’s the sense in raising your hopes if he can’t find anything?”

  “So you’re a private investigator?” His eyes haven’t left me. I’m realizing he’s not a totally unattractive man for a Brit. Far paler than milk, but he’s well toned, a condition not so much of working out with any consistency but a diet of coffee and the stray vegetables Yasmine pushes in his way—at least if his stomach has anything to say about it. His angled jaw holds that classic, working-class pride which makes the idea of digging ditches seem so noble.

  I’m noticing all of this, but its just distraction. There’s something else going on—near us, around us. Yasmine’s body notices even if her mind doesn’t.

  “How’re you feeling?” I ask. He’s a norm. I don’t feel obliged to maintain Yasmine’s lies to him, not when she’s displaying her domesticated fervor with no regard to me.

  “Yes, honey,” she interjects smoothly. “That allergy attack you had earlier must have been hell on your system.” I can’t help but smile a little bit.

  “That was the most curious thing,” he says, finally breaking his gaze to loosen his collar. “And right on the heels of making an ass of myself with your friend. I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Do you feel it?” There’s an electrical storm happening in a nearby brain. Yasmine knows I’m talking to her. It’s our sort of “it.” The “it” I’d see in her eyes whenever she saw fire, like a master violinist approaching a Stradivarius, the “it” she was in my eyes whenever I came home from work.

  “Feel what?”

  “Quiet, Fish’n’Chips,” I snap.

  “What?” Yasmine is concerned. Her body is reacting, stomach tensing, her brain attuning itself to whatever foreign signals flames offer. Somewhere, something is burning. It’s close by, but I don’t see it. I’m scanning the windows, both sides of the car, trying not to look frantic and failing miserably.

  “Someone like me. Close by.” I’m trying to keep my voice down. The security in the front already doesn’t like me.

  “What’s going on?” Darren is getting scared. One hand is already wrapped tightly around the oh-shit grip above the door.

  “Be quiet, love,” she says more tenderly than I thought those words could be delivered. “Is it the girl with the animals?”

  “No. Someone different. Bigger.” I’m feeling a buildup of pressure somewhere close; it matches the rising of the mental storm. I try and pinpoint it. I scan Yasmine, her man, the security people. Nothing. It’s another body, close, focusing power on us. “We’ve got to get out of the car. Now!”

  “But why?” Darren’s asking.

  “Trust us, honey,” Yasmine says, tapping on the soundproof glass that separates the front section from us. As soon as it comes down she speaks. “Stop the car. We need to get out.”

  The security detail argues all the bullshit reasons we can’t pull over, but I’m feeling this swelling like an impact wound that fills with blood before the blow is complete. Only I can’t find the body. I jump to the left of the car, scanning outside for anyone, anything about to . . . explode violently. You try and find someone ready to blow, then tell me what they look like. I slide to the right of the car, ignoring Fish’n’Chips’s confused gaze. The Thames is just as murky as the sky, traffic is phenomenally slow, young and old Britons alike make their way through the fall afternoon bundled against the coming cold. Again, nothing unusual. I’m desperate, but I can’t locate it. All I know is that soon this blister is going to pop. It’s not going to pop on a body. I’d feel it if it were any of our bodies. It’s not a matter of flesh. But the buildup is coming from somewhere. I stop focusing on my powers and analyze the situation logically. A second too late.

  “Oh God. Mene?” I’m crying.

  “Tag?” That’s all she can say. It’s the gas tank. My nickname is the last word that escapes her lips before the car blows. Times like this, I wish blacking out was easier for me. Instead I get to watch the gas tank push metal, flame, and seat up through Darren. It happens in under a second, but my perception gets precise and detailed under stressful conditions, so I witness the macabre cartoon of Fish’n’Chips’s demise like it was on Blu-ray. He’s flattening against the roof of the car before even it gives way to the heat. Mene . . . Her arm is gone, along with the rest of her right side, engulfed in flame by the time I have a chance to look in her direction. I want to scream, but when I open my mouth the fire finds an opening and sears from my throat to my belly quicker than I can heal. I get relief of a sort. The force of the explosion propels me through the front of the car, past the cab, and into the street. My back scrapes the engine block, immovable but inferno hot. Through it all, I’m still reaching for Yasmine. I have to stay conscious. Instinctively, my body tries to regrow skin first. Wrong move. My lungs and internal tissue are more important right now. I’ll redraw eyelids and other facial features later. I’m still conscious to see the secondary explosion of the car.

  The two guards in the front seat never knew what hit them. No weapons drawn. No attempt to get out. Only screaming and clawing at their own skin, trying to get the pieces of glass out of their eyes. I can’t hear them. The explosion destroyed my eardrums. That’s why I’m stumbling, why I almost impale myself on a flaming metal spike thrown up from the trunk of the car.

  I take a break from making new pink lungs to redraw my eardrums. That means I also take a break from shutting down my pain receptors. I have to know what balance feels like. I feel it all for a second and understand the value of painkillers as I never have before. Fuck. The car blew up.

  We’re on one of the bridges over the Thames. I can’t tell which one. I can’t shut my eyes. I have no eyelids, and just melted flesh where there used to be a skinny face, and half my throat is gone. A piece of metal from my seat is lodged in my back. All I can really see is the modern-art piece that used to be the car . I’m pulling myself through the still-flaming debris. I see the upper part of Yasmine’s arm and grab it instinctually. The car, body parts, norms—we’re all scattered across the street. I move a melted piece of engine and realize that it was half-merged with Yasmine’s hip. She doesn’t scream. She’s too far gone. I can see skull. I scream my pain and hers. It wakes her for a second.

  “Baby!” She’s still alive. I can heal her.

  “Oh God, oh God . . .” She’s talking with absolutely no control over her lower jaw. It’s dislocated, maybe broken as well.

  “You’re fine. I’ve got you. You’re with me now. I can heal you. . . .” Three of her ribs are stabb
ing into her pancreas, her lungs, and her spleen. She’s literally burned to the bone over most of the right side of her body. Both her legs are gone. I can’t stop her organ systems from failing. Her jaw is dislocated. I should’ve eaten more.

  “Oh God, Darren. He . . . Is he . . .?” I want to laugh; she almost sounds drunk. I want this to be a mistake, a joke, anything other than a successful assassination attempt. I’m regretting my world, all my time away from her, coming back, meeting her, sharing that first cigarette in college. I wish I’d never met her, wish there was some way that this wouldn’t hurt so much.

  “I can’t do anything for him, Mene. Sit down . . . No, Yasmine, don’t move. I’m trying to heal you.” My power is limited. The thing inside me won’t let me heal her, because it’s too busy healing me. I’m trying. I’m pushing, but it’s like the powers don’t think I can do anything. For all my control, it is still the thing that lives inside me that does the work. And it, not me, has decided my life is more important than hers. But I can—

  “Where’s my daughter?” I can’t heal, but I can still sense. I’ve felt this before. This is death. Death hates me. Just like everyone else. Death wants me. When it realizes it can’t have me, that my lungs are already healed, that I’m working on my esophagus now, that soon my skin will be coming back, when it realizes this it targets my reason for living. She coughs blood in my face. A message from death. The poorest people in Africa told me a healer is death to a warrior’s spirit. But they don’t know what death is to me. Death is my ultimate enemy, and given enough time, death always wins.

  “I’ll find her, Yasmine. I’ll find her. I’ll protect her. I promise . . .” She’s gone. There’s nothing in this bag of flesh that I know anymore. It’s just a collection of elements, mostly water and blood, calcium deposits, nerve clusters . . . there is no more Mene. I want to curl up next to her, be under her like she was under me back at G.W. late at night, listening to Liz Phair, a lifetime ago. But there’s something ugly and dark inside me that knows to run when it hears sirens. The rest of the world starts demanding attention. It’s all broken cars, people, and screams. Nothing on the bridge remains whole after the explosion. I am not fully featured yet. I have only the stubs of eyelids. I’m missing a face. My clothes are half burned off me. But I run. I run down by the Thames. And out of some perverse need to cleanse myself of my sins I am yet to commit, I consecrate my body to the water. I baptize myself in the Thames and do not reemerge.